Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. It's not always popular to take a stand, but when God comes to a church in unusual power, we often see courage and resolve that was not there before.
Today, how one ancient church took its stand and how to imitate them as darkness settles over our land. From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, some dark days are already upon us, so today's message could not be more needed. And you know Dave, in the midst of this darkness, what this world needs is light. So we can talk about the darkness as a matter of fact in some of my books I've written about the darkness. But right now I want to share my heart with everyone who is listening. Even as we approach the Christmas season, let us use this opportunity to witness to others, to help them to understand as the saying goes, the reason for the season, to help people to understand that Jesus Christ came on a mission and that is to save us from our sins.
Let's use the darkness and the challenges of the darkness to make sure that we shine a bright light. And in order to help us, we're making a very special resource available for you just this week. It's entitled A Case for Christmas by Lee Strobel. Now Lee has a degree in law. He was an atheist.
But as a result of the evidence for Christianity, he became a fervent Christian and is a great apologist. And this booklet that I'm holding in my hands is going to be a great resource for you during the Christmas season. Read it for yourself, share it with a friend, share it with a skeptic, and it can become a part of the light that we're speaking about. For a gift of any amount, it can be yours. Here's what you do.
Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337. Now I'm going to be giving you that contact info once again after this message. It's a great opportunity for you to have a resource to share with others at Christmas. So let me begin today with a question. What is it that you stand for? What are those core values for which you would be willing to die? Would it be possible for someone to wave big money in your face and as a result of that compromise your integrity?
At what point could you be bought or could you never be bought? What do you stand for? How much temptation are you willing to endure for the cause of your marriage and for the cause of your God?
I say to the young people present, how much peer pressure can you put up with and not get into drugs and alcohol and those kinds of things? How strong is your stand? Well, as individuals we have to stand but also as a church. The church has to stand for something and when you stand for something you immediately stand against something else.
Wilbur Force in England in the late 1700s and then again he lived of course until the early 1800s. He stood with the slaves against slavery. He stood for something and despite a hard time and being evil spoken against and amid great opposition it was his efforts that eventually put an end to that social injustice. Churches need to stand. We stand for doctrine. We stand for social justice. We stand against the current of society and we become greatly countercultural for what we do stand for.
We stand for the unborn because we have a stand that is important to us. Now what you find is that the church in Thessalonica and you know that this is a series of messages that is titled when God comes to church because when God comes and begins to do a great work in the lives of people there's a transformation of heart and there's a transformation of values and that happened in the church of Thessalonica. Things changed because God was there and the Apostle Paul was talking to the church because they were going through a time of persecution.
In fact he says to this you were appointed. A hard time in the Christian life is appointed to you by God. If in your workplace if in your relationships you are going through a difficult time that all is a part of the Christian life and the growing experience that all of us have as we walk with God and Paul discovered that this church even though vocationally they were being marginalized they couldn't get the best jobs even though they were being ridiculed for their faith and even though measures were being taken against them even including being thrown in jail they stood and Paul says for that I am deeply, deeply grateful. The key verse in today's message is actually found in the third chapter of 1 Thessalonians where you can turn. 1 Thessalonians chapter 3 and it's in verse 8. If you're in the habit of underlining your Bibles this would be a good verse to underline. It is very brief and it is the heart and soul of what I'm speaking about today. Notice that Paul says 1 Thessalonians chapter 3 verse 8 for now we live if you are standing fast in the Lord.
Paul is saying at last I can breathe again. At last I can relax and be joyful because I've heard that you are standing firm. The term is a military term. It means that you stand when arrows are being shot at you. It means that you stand when it's difficult. You stand in good weather in bad weather.
You stand when others stand with you and you stand if you need to stand alone but you stand. Paul says now I can live. I heard that you are standing fast and the apostle Paul says that there's a possibility that they might not have. You'll notice in verse 5 he says for this reason when I could bear it no longer I sent to learn about your faith for fear that somehow the tempter had tempted you and our labor would be in vain.
That's quite a warning. Paul says I was so concerned about you because it's possible that the devil derailed you in your walk with God. The devil does three things regarding our faith.
First of all he wants to prevent our faith. The Bible says that he even blinds the minds of those who are listening. There's some of you who are listening today and you may even hear the words but it's not going to have an opportunity to sink deeply into your heart and there's a battle going on. There's even a battle going on for you to concentrate on what I'm saying. Jesus said that the tempter not only blinds the minds but sometimes he snatches faith right out of people's hearts.
That's what it says. In the parable that Jesus said the seed is sown which is the word of God and he says some of the seed falls on a hard road and the birds come and eat it. Later on he explains that the birds are the devil that snatches the word of God out of people's minds.
Some of you will struggle to remember what it is that I even spoke about because of the battle that's going on and if the devil can't do that then he discourages us. A long illness, friends that betray us, difficulties will erode our faith because that is what he's after. So Paul says I was really concerned that maybe the devil got his way and it turns out that you really aren't following God and so Paul was so glad that that was wrong. How does the Apostle Paul strengthen the church? What is his contribution to making this congregation strong enough to weather the storm?
And the way in which Paul strengthens the church is the very same way in which you and I strengthen each other. If you send a child to college you want that child to have backbone. You want that child to stand against the possibility of the debauchery that will be available to him or to her. You want that child to stand. What is your contribution?
What is the child's contribution? How do we stand? And the reason it is difficult to stand is because the temptations come from within the desires of the flesh and of the mind as Paul says.
And then of course peer pressure. At prayer meeting we're praying for prodigals and we're fasting and we're praying. We're serious about this business of prodigals. And if you ask the prodigals why did you leave the faith and leave home?
Almost always I got in with the wrong crowd they'll say. It's the power of influence. And so you have the struggle within and you have the pressure without and the temptation is that you fall away not from the faith ultimately but that you just live in vain because of the pressure.
So how do we help people? Well I hope that you're ready because we're going to give you Paul's strategy and in the end it'll transform your life, the life of your friends and the life of the church if we take it seriously. Thanks for joining us on the journey. First of all the Apostle Paul encouraged the church by sending Timothy. He begins in verse 1 by saying when I could bear it no longer he says I just couldn't.
I had to find out how you were doing. He says I sent Timothy our brother and God's co-worker in the gospel of Christ to establish and exhort you. Paul couldn't go there himself because there was criticism of him. You remember he was run out of town if you've been following this series of messages and so he couldn't go back and he was busy at Athens and so he says Timothy I'm sending you.
I want you to find out how the church is doing but I want you to establish them so that they are strengthened to stand. And what is Timothy? First of all he's a brother. He's a fellow Christian. Paul says he's a fellow servant, a fellow laborer which shows you that he was really a team player. He was going to be there not coming to lord it over this congregation but to help this congregation. Paul elsewhere calls him a servant, a diakonos which is really the word deacon. You know you say what should deacons be doing here at the church? What does a deacon do? Well deacons do many different things but one of the things that deacons should be doing is standing alongside of others to strengthen them that they themselves will be strengthened in the process.
That's part of the responsibility within the church of being a deacon. In fact Timothy was so unusual. He was so young that Paul had to kind of defend his youth and Paul says I have nobody else he says in Philippians that is willing to care for you like Timothy because everybody is seeking their own thing. They're all doing their own but he says Timothy will have your good in mind so Paul says I'm sending Timothy to help establish you. How do we stand?
How does the young man, the soldier in the military, the Christian soldier who goes into the military where he's surrounded by all these opportunities to waste his life morally and in other ways, how does he stand? The answer is with the help of others. Students when you go off to college as a Christian student the first thing you should do before you get your room organized is to find the Christian groups on campus and join them and become a part of Bible studies and a part of friendships because apart from that I can predict with almost absolute certainty you will not stand. Nobody stands alone and that's why we need one another and when it comes to churches how do we stand? We help one another. That's why we sent this team to India to strengthen the church because we have resources, we have books, we have more money, we have opportunities to be trained and they don't have that so how do we strengthen the church? We go there, we send short-term missionaries to different parts of the world with the intention of helping the church to stand.
I say to you today my Christian friend that if you are standing stand alongside of someone else that you can help stand for the faith and be encouraged. So that's the first thing that Paul did. He sent Timothy. Secondly Paul says it's not only necessary that you have someone beside you but it's also necessary that you know something and so he wrote 1st and 2nd Timothy. All the letters that Paul wrote are not necessarily part of inspired scripture.
There are apparently some he wrote that were so localized that they were not included as inspired scripture but 1st and 2nd Timothy are inspired scripture and so Paul wrote to them and what did he say in these two letters that he wrote to the church? Well he talked about himself, he was defending his ministry but also what he was doing is taking people and helping them understand those doctrines that are going to make them sound in the faith and able to stand. You can't stand without knowledge, without understanding and so in the 1st and 2nd Timothy he talks about God in chapter 1 as we learned who chose the church.
He talks about the church in the past. It originated in God's heart and then he talks about the return of Jesus Christ in the future. 33 verses of 1st Timothy are devoted to the return of Christ and in between he speaks about the ministry of the Holy Spirit who will energize, who will help, who will come alongside of us to help us to stand and to be encouraged. You see we need the word of God all the time if we're going to stand and the reason is because the graces that we receive day by day fade away. At times maybe you've left a service on a Sunday morning and you just felt that you could take on the world and then on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday it wore off and pretty soon you are back into the same old sinful ruts. It's because the grace that you receive today won't carry you for tomorrow, you need new grace. That's why you're in the word every day because the Bible is food that nourishes us.
It is light that guides us and it is a weapon that defends us. You need the word of God if you're going to stand. Absolutely an essential. As you know I don't wear a clerical collar. There's some ministers that do and there are reasons why I don't and there are reasons why others would disagree with that and that's not my point today but I do think that there is one advantage to wearing a clerical collar.
I heard a minister say who wears one that he wears it all the time seven days a week because he said it keeps him from temptations that he would otherwise fall into because he said with a clerical collar you'll never go into a tawdry place, some connection that is sinful because after all you do represent God and everybody around you knows that you represent God and so you stay away from those compromises that would make God look bad in the eyes of the watching world. Now how do we resist temptation? We have to know who we are, know who we belong to, know who we represent and that can come to us only through the word of God and it is through that that we are strengthened to stand even if we must stand alone. So Paul says first of all I send someone to help, secondly he says I give people information and thirdly, incredibly important, he says I pray. Let's pick up the text now in verse nine. He says for what thanksgiving can we return to God for you. For all the joy that we feel for your sake before God as we pray most earnestly night and day that we may see your face and supply what is lacking in your faith.
Just that far for a moment. Notice the intensity of the prayer. He says I pray earnestly.
Notice the frequency of it. He prays, he says day and night. That didn't mean that all that Paul did was stop for prayer but the burden to pray was so heavy on his soul that even when he was working making tents or even when he was going to the congregations, even when he was preaching, even as he was working with people he was praying all the time because the burden was there to pray earnestly and intensely day and night. See one of the things that God wants to do in our lives is to birth within us this kind of a passion for prayer and that's why we are so thankful for all those who do attend prayer meeting though some of you can't for whatever reason but there is a passion that God wants to develop within us so that our will and his will are harmonized and as we cry up to God with passion and fervency God says now you have shown your seriousness and I will answer. Paul says day and night I've prayed.
Some of us have committed to pray one hour per week all this year and some of you are struggling at this point in the process and the reason that you're struggling is because you don't want to just say the same old thing in the same old way and you don't have to. How do you pray? You take the biblical prayers and you pray them. You pray chapters of the Bible. It's amazing how prayers arise out of chapters in the Bible that you might not think are specifically devoted to prayer but notice how Paul prays for these people. He doesn't pray like we do almost always we pray for physical healing.
So and so has a difficulty and we pray and we believe that that's scriptural and it might be of interest for you to know that we as elders met this morning to anoint someone with oil and to pray for her in her physical difficulties. So we believe in that but Paul didn't concentrate on that. He was after bigger issues.
He had other fish to fry. He was interested in praying first of all for their faith. That's what he says there in verse 10 because that's always what is at stake and secondly in verse 11 he says may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another. That's essential if you're going to stand because you have to stand together and verse 13 so that he may establish your hearts blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ with all the saints. What do you pray for? You pray for faith.
It's the most critical. See nobody plunges into sin unless first of all their faith is gone because if I don't have faith in God's goodness if I don't believe God's way is best last Wednesday a prodigal who gave his testimony said an amazing thing he was so upset with God he said God all that you need to do is to keep me alive that is your part and he said then I will run my life by myself your responsibility keep me alive my responsibility is to do my own thing. See no faith no faith that God's way is best.
Well that's very sobering isn't it? The reason that we sin is we think that we know better than God we're actually obeying Satan rather than obeying God. Now during this Christmas season I hope that we take advantage of all of the opportunities that God gives us to be a witness. We talk about the darkness yes but my dear friends we are agents of light. That's why we're making a special resource available for you just this week it's entitled the case for Christmas by Lee Strobel. Lee was a skeptic he was an atheist but as a result of the evidence for Christianity he became a fervent believer. Now this booklet is going to introduce you to such matters as why it is that the biographies of the New Testament the manuscripts are available and reliable. He's going to introduce you to scientific evidence archaeological evidence he'll answer a question like this did Jesus and Jesus alone match the identity of the Messiah? It's a very quick read on the topic of apologetics it's a great booklet to have you read it give it to a friend during this Christmas season for a gift of any amount it will be yours. Here's what you do go to rtwoffer.com that's rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337.
All of us need to have our faith bolstered with understanding regarding history and archaeology and the case for Christmas does that in a very readable form. Right now go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-9337 and thank you so much for helping us get the gospel around the world. We can't do that without people just like you. You can write to us at Running to Win 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard Chicago Illinois 60614. Running to Win comes to you from the Moody Church in Chicago to help you understand God's roadmap for your race of life. Next time more on finding the strength to stand for Christ when the going gets tough. Thanks for listening. For Dr. Erwin Lutzer this is Dave McAlister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
